Fifty years sharing the same bed. Fifty years of grocery runs and utility bills and ordinary life.
I thought I'd finally made it into her heart.
Turns out, her greatest regret wasn't that she hadn't lived a better life with me.
It was that she hadn't died alongside another man.
Peter Gilbert arrived just as the doctors finished.
A doctor stepped out and told us the patient was out of danger. We could go in and see her.
Peter didn't wait. He pushed the door open and went straight in.
I followed behind.
At the doorway, I deliberately fell half a step back.
Kirsten was propped up against the hospital bed, her face drained of all color.
Exactly the same as the last life.
The moment she saw Peter, her whole face lit up.
"Peter, you didn't get on the boat?"
My feet nailed themselves to the floor.
So that was it.
She'd been reborn too.
I stood outside the doorframe. From that angle I could see the side of her face.
Her gaze was fixed entirely on Peter.
In the last life, across all fifty years, the way she looked at me had been gentle. Grateful. Dependent.
But never like this.
This look had light in it, the kind that had crossed decades and the boundary between life and death.